This is just going to be the white elephant in the room of my recap if I don't say it straight away, so here goes: Matt is going to be appearing in a film about a vagina that has teeth. That has to be the best thing I've heard so far this year, closely followed by the fact that this toothed vagina is an actual concern that men have had for thousands of years. Boys are idiots.

So how was everyone's holiday? Mine was great. I got some mittens so now my hands won't get frostbite. On the down side, I can't dial my phone anymore. If you'll recall, last we saw the Nip/Tuck bunch, Rachael the scary burn victim Israeli woman was scary and burned up, plus Christian and Julia were banging each other. Those are the only two issues that were addressed this episode. Oh plus Freddy's a ragining homosexual.

Matt has apparently escorted Rachael to a consultation with Sean, who despite being a successful plastic surgeon and television actor, has hours upon hours of free time in which to consult with patients and perform free surgeries. Rachael complains of a lot of pain in her cheek, which Sean diagnoses as balled-up nerves. Such is the price you pay for eating falafel. He offers to splice in a nerve ending from her leg, to which she responds, "You want to take a nerve from my leg?!" Which, shut it, Burny McBurnedalot. Receipients of free surgery should not look the gift surgeon in the mouth. Or even in the eye. Matt assures her that Sean is the best face-nerve-replacement doctor in the region (I swear he says something very close to face-nerve-replacement doctor; it was ridiculous), which consoles her a little.

Then Christian prances in, acts offended when he surmises that Rachael will accept free surgery from Sean the Movie Star, but not from Christian the Guy Who Would Probably Feel You Up While You Were Under Anesthesia. Sean assures Christian that her surgery is of a strictly medical nature, and Christian looks at the x-ray and immediately discerns that the pail Rachael is experiencing is from a tooth lodged in her cheeck. That is so R.L. Stein, I can't even stand it.

Fucking H&S is back, just when I thought we were rid of it for good. The episode is based on that one time when the black lady came to Christian and Sean because she'd been a victim of female circumcision and she wanted her clitoris reconstructed. That happened in Season 2 or 3, I can't remmeber. Anyway, I sort of like the way the writers stick in these little throwbacks, which are kind of like the dividends we're paid for having watched the show for so long. On the other hand, they might just be too lazy to think up new wacky plots for a plastic surgery drama. On a third hand, though, part of Sean's role as factual consultant is to give Freddy ideas for episodes based on his own experience. Which is not the role of a factual consultant, just Sean's role, as per the elaborate deal he made with Freddy back before he was rich and famous and constantly occupied with pro bono work on his son's lovers.

Anyway, the clitoral reconstruction is done by using tissue from one of the patient's toes. So on the H&S set they cut the tip off this toe, and blood just spurts out, like in a cheesy slasher flick. You could even see the tip of the blood-spurting tube. It was pretty great. I wish the "real" surgeries spewed blood like that. Then the best news of my life: Rosie O'Donnell is back, and she's dressed just like Freddy Prune, in futuristic (if the future was inhabited by fat people in jogging suits) shiny silver jogging suits. In the 90s, in Pittsburgh, we used to call them windsuits, but then when TV mobsters wear them, they call them something different, so I don't know what they're commonly called. You know what I mean. Just picture the most comfortable clothes in the world and you've got it.

Dawn Budge is upset because H&S was invited to have a float in the Gay Pride parade, and Freddy didn't ask her to be on it. Also because it's a Gay Pride parade, and that's gay. Also because Freddy is gay. And probably in love with Dr. Aiden Stone. Freddy's all, "Are you homophobic?" and she's like, "No! I have plenty of gay friends," and she lists her priest among them. That's a shitty joke, but Rosie pulled it off. I love her almost as much as I love Ellen.

I heard the noises of Julia and Christian knocking boots, and immediately I thought to myself, "Goddamnit! This is going to be the most disgusting thing I've ever seen!" Then, luckily, Julia got a nosebleed before I had to see anything really gross. It's her third nosebleed this week, which leads me and the entire viewing audience to surmise that Eden's poison was probably just as evil as she made it out to be. Hopefully Julia's brain will melt and bleed out her nose, and we'll never have to deal with her again. She somehow makes the nosebleed fodder for a squabble with Christian, to everyone's astonishment.

Christian walks into work the next morning (afternoon? early evening?) to find a buxom young lady has been hired as the new receptionist, the old receptionist having apparently been abducted by aliens or burned up in a meth fire or something. They make sensuous small talk about where she got her breast implants, and then she taunts Christian and asks him to fuck her, and he loosens his tie and acts like Rodney Dangerfield for about two seconds before accusing Sean of hiring her as a decoy. As much as this may be true, I can't help but worry that spending so much time around Julia has influenced Christian to suppose that every decision that every person in the world makes has his benefit or destruction in mind. He thinks that Sean thought that if he hired a 6 with the titties of a 10, Christian wouldn't be able to resist banging her, and then he and Julia would break up, and Sean could be the lucky, lucky default boyfriend. Sean outwardly scoffs and inwardly marvels at Christian's amazing ability to read him like a book.

They surgerize Rachael, and as Sean removes the suicide bomber's tooth from her face flesh, the ghost (or Sean's imagination's idea) of the bomber shows up to speecify and be ill-lit. Despite the fact that he consistently appears in the least flattering and stupidest lighting imaginable, the bomber is pretty hot. Even though he has no teeth (but is otherwise in one piece). Sean gets freaked out by this, Rachael's nightmare.

In a glorious return to old-school Christian sex, Christian has sex with the new receptionist. Just as in days of yore, they are both pretty much naked, we see a lot of Christian's ass, and they have sex for like four seconds in each of 1,500 positions. Post-climax, Christian realizes that the receptionist can't pronounce Julia's name, and fires her on the spot.

Just as Sean is about to begin a meeting with some gentlemen from the East India Trading Co. to talk about stocks and bonds over some cigars and brandy (dude was old), Rachael runs in, freaking out and possibly possessed by the bomber's ghost. Her face is really disgusting. I can't get over it. I mean, I can, because I know it's fake, but if she were a real person whom I had to deal with on a regular basis, that shit would never cease to freak me out. Also pretty freaky is her behavior. She probably is possessed by the ghost. That happened in a Fear Street book once, there was this ghost that went around possessing people. Every year on his birthday, all the kids in the town had to play this huge game of hide and seek in the woods, and if you got to base before he got you, you were safe, but if you didn't, he'd possess you. It was a really awesome book because the ghost only possessed one kid every year, so you had this one chance a year to be smarter and quicker and better and safer than all the other kids in your town, and kids would sacrifice each other to save themselves, and it was so cool and evil. Also the ghost's birthday was my birthday, which unnerved me for a reason I can't explain. Anyway, there's some "human shrapnel" in Rachael's body from when the bomber exploded, and she figures that she'll never get rid of her nightmares until she gets every tiny piece of this guy out of her tissues.

This is an interesting idea to me, the human shrapnel thing. It's akin to cannibalism, almost, like because you have these parts of this person in your body, whether by digestion or as intruders or joining with your own flesh, you aquire something from them. It could be strength, it could be vitality, but in Rachael's case it's nightmares. I would think there would have to be some nightmares from any of those means, but I like the idea that she was to physically remove the parts of him from the places on her in order to forgive and forget him. You couldn't so easily remove the traces of another person if you ate them or received an organ donation or something. Maybe because his body's intrustion wasn't her choice, she is allowed to sever the connections permanently. It's almost like he raped her, all over her body, and in order to cope with that, she just has to keep cleansing herself until she gets rid of every trace of him.

After lunch, or something, the buxom receptionist is back on the job. Sean re-hired her so that she wouldn't sue them for sexual harrassment. Christian is upset by this (which I think he takes to be undermining his authority, but which is really just Sean being a subversive dick), and Sean promises to find someone (ominously here) better suited to the job. Then he twirls his mustache and flounces off to tie a damsel to some railroad tracks. You really can't trust the guy whose wife you're fucking.

Dawn and Freddy enter, Dawn's face having been awesomely run over by a motorcycle. Does this chick get the best surgery stories or what? Seriously. Plus it happened at the Gay Pride parade, which means that we get a FLASHBACK! Though less awesome than some previous flashbacks, it's pretty good. It's definitely super gay, so they captured that nicely. Then Dawn gets hit in the face with a motorcycle tire, and that's almost as good as the eagle eating her lip, so I'm satisfied. Dawn claims that the lesbian on the motorcycle ran her over intentionally, and wants to sue her for all she's got. Sean is almost like, "Oh, it's bad to hate on the gays," but at the last second the bomber ghost shows up to seduce him into being evil.

Christian greets Julia at home with, "I'm a doctor, so I know this is just what you need to feel better." And it's fucking sushi. If someone is gushing blood from the nose and fainting every three seconds, the last thing they need is sake and raw fish. She should probably be on a strict diet of Tums for the next few days, at least. Sean shows up and the soundtrack goes on Gladiator/Syriana on our asses, and for a second we see Sean through Sean's fantasy lens, and he's wearing a bomb strapped to his chest. That would be badass, if a suicide bomber could convince someone else to become a suicide bomber posthumously. Of course, it's just his imagination, and instead, bomb-less, he tells them that he's moving out. Why he didn't do this long ago, is beyond me. PS, Sean, take Wilbur with you.

Freddy stops by the office to check on post-surgery Dawn, and Liz tries her damndest to convince him to admit that he's gay. Freddy nervously says (in the funniest line of this season, probably) that he needs "a snack, a yummy snack" in the form of take-out. I don't know why that cracked me up, but it did. It's so gay.

All the parts of the bomber are taken out of Rachael, and she mails them to his family. This is her final step in the process of getting him all out of her. The last place he was left was in her heart, and by forgiving him, she is able to move on. This ought to teach Sean a lesson, since it's this week's theme (since last time was also Forgiveness, I like to call this one X-Treme Forgiveness), but he's a salty old bastard, and he stays mad.

A verbal altercation between Dawn and her motorist assailant convinces us that the lesbian is poor and that Dawn is not going to sue her. Then she and Freddy get into a fight about how she only loves gay guys, and it's so hard to be gay, and you know what? Is it gay pride month or something? There is a lot of speechifying in this episode about how to love thy neighbor, and it's pretty depressing, on the one hand, but it's also like a Leftist's satire of morally conservative Americans: Sean hates the bomber's family and calls them terrorists several times. He hates all of these people, forever, because of this one incident. And then Dawn is angry towards gays. At first we think it's because a gay attacked her, and they're dangerous; then we learn that she's angry at them because she loves them. If that's not rife with social commentary, I don't know what is. Stupid hoity-toity Nip/Tuck. More gore!

True to his malicious portent, Sean has hired the best possible receptionist in the world: Gina! She's got AIDS! She only addresses Christian as "asshole"! She's Wilbur's MOM! Christian is not happy about this, and his head reels just thinking about all the AIDS he's going to get.

Suddenly, he and Sean have engaged in fisticuffs. Honestly, their fight appears to rely more on knocking over doctor equiptment than it does on beating the hell out of each other. They tumble around for a while, desperately wishing to look as cool as the fight scene in They Live, and are eventually quelled when Liz sprays them with a fire extinguisher and scolds them.

Dawn and Liz, reconciled from earlier bickering, travel together down the hallway, two souls sharing two kidneys. I had actually forgotten that Dawn donated her kidney to Liz until they mentioned it. That's so Dragonheart of them. Dawn bought the lesbian a new motorcycle and is paying for a year of her daughter's tuition at Yale. I wish I won the lottery and could throw around money like that, except that I'd still spend it all on me.

Rachael wants surgery to fix her face after all, because she wants guys to want to bone her again. It would be really hard to go from being beautiful to being burned up and gross. Still, Sean (and the audience) suspects that either she or Matt or both love the other, and he doesn't want her to go through all this just for Matt. Matt's a methhead, remember? She assures him that even she would never stoop so low as to find Matt attractive in any way, and he sort of agrees to do the surgeries, I guess. Anyway, he seems more amenable to it than he did to Marlowe's request for leg extensions.

Finally, after like 18 people telling him that he needs to do it, Sean forgives Christian for porking Julia. It's about Goddamn time, too. Everyone on this show needs to get the fuck over himself, especially if he is running a business with the subject of his ire. They plan to chop up Rachael's face together. How sweet.

Next week looks to be even less diabolical than this week, so I'm unexcited for that, although it looks like Dr. Aiden Stone will be fucking Eden, because Sean doesn't know what to do if he's not challenging one or the other of his coworkers to a duel.